Reflections, commentaries, critiques and ideas from 40 years experience in the fields of Community Development, Community Education and Social Justice. Useful tools and techniques that I have learnt also added occassionally.

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The name of this blog, Rainbow Juice, is intentional.The rainbow signifies unity from diversity. It is holistic. The arch suggests the idea of looking at the over-arching concepts: the big picture. To create a rainbow requires air, fire (the sun) and water (raindrops) and us to see it from the earth.Juice suggests an extract; hence rainbow juice is extracting the elements from the rainbow, translating them and making them accessible to us. Juice also refreshes us and here it symbolises our nutritional quest for understanding, compassion and enlightenment.

Tuesday, 24 January 2017

A Poem for Davos

At the beginning of each year the World Economic Forum is held in the Swiss
city of Davos. And, Oxfam releases its briefing paper on economic inequality to coincide with that forum,. This year (2017) is no exception. Last years briefing paper stated that there was“shocking new evidence of an inequality
crisis that is out of control.”

One of the figures quoted in last year's paper was that the richest sixty-two people
in the world had as much wealth as 3.6 billion people – the poorest half of the
world’s population. Surely, such a statistic is worrying, unsustainable and
should be a call for drastic action. If we thought that was bad enough, the
figure quoted in this years paper is almost unbelievable. Oxfam now reports
that just eight (that's right – eight) men own the same amount
of wealth as do the poorest half of the world’s population.1
Oxfam has done its research. These figures come from sources such as the
Forbes Billionaires listing and the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook 2016.
Hardly sources that are easy to dismiss.

Instead of analysing or reviewing Oxfams briefing paper, I thought I’d post a
Poem for Davos this week. I know its not very good, so excuse the poetic
travesty. Go read the briefing paper itself. Its available online at www.oxfam.org

A POEM FOR DAVOS
Economists, politicians and advisors aplenty
To Swiss Davos they have come again
Vowing once more to share the wealth
Put an end to poverty, misery and pain.

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About Me

I have almost 40 years experience working (paid and unpaid, government and non-government) in community development/education and social justice fields. I have continued to keep myself abreast of philosophies and theories in these and related fields. This blogsite will offer ideas, thoughts, reflections on these fields as well as giving some tools and techniques. I don't pretend that these will be original but I do hope that they will be able to translate some of these diverse ideas into coherent forms accessible to workers in the areas.